UC-NRLF 


CO 

CO 
CO 


George  Davidson 


UNIVERSITY  OR1TION 


BY 


Hon.  WM.  G.  I  HAMMOND,  LL.  D 


DELIVERED    AT 


THE  COMMENCEMENT 


OF    THE 


UxivKRsrrv  OK   I<>\v,\ 


JUflE   17th,   1890 


: 


PUBLIC  EDUCATION, 


UNIYERSITY  ORflTION 


BY 


Hon.  WM.  G.  HAMMOND,  LL.  D, 

11 


DELIVERED    AT 


THE  COMMENCEMENT 


OF    THE 


TATE  UNIVERSITY  OK   IOWA, 


JUflE  17th,   189O. 


Republican  Company, 

Printers  und  Binders, 

Iowa  City,  Iowa. 


r 


Public  Education. 


N  the  history  of  human  civilization  there  are  two  periods  so  far  sur- 
passing others  that  students  who  desire  to  measure  man's  capacity 
for  improvement,  or  to  derive  instruction  for  the  future,  may  well 
be  excused  for  neglecting  all  the  rest.  So  far  indeed  as  our  own  Aryan 
branch  of  the  race  is  concerned  there  are  no  others.  Whatever  anti- 
quarian research  may  have  shown,  or  may  yet  show  us,  of  Chinese  or 
Egyptian  wisdom,  or  of  the  still  more  ancient  "empires  that  sit  in  sullen - 
ness  and  gloom,"  buried  beneath  the  waves  of  oblivion  as  deeply  as  the 
fabled  Atlantis  lies  beneath  the  ocean  traversed  by  the  iron  steamship 
of  to-day,— yet  none  of  their  lessons  can  have  for  us  the  value  of  those 
we  draw  from  these  two  periods.  The  earlier  is  that  which  men  for 
centuries  (and  ever  since  modern  life  has  been  able  to  feel  and  appreciate 
its  matchless  charm)  have  agreed  to  call  the  classic  age:  the  age  in  which 
the  individual  man  seemed  to  attain  his  highest  development  as  a  model 
and  canon  for  all  af tertime— as  delicate  as  the  the  Greek  chisel,  as  strong 
as  the  Roman  sword;  profound  in  speculative  thought  as  Plato,  wide  and 
exact  in  objective  knowledge  as  Aristotle;  embodying  the  most  subtle 
moods  and  tenses  of  human  thought  in  the  infinite  variety  yet  constant 
unity  of  a  Greek  verb,  or  sternly  governing  human  action  and  human 
passion  by  the  written  reason  of  Roman  law. 

The  later  period  dawned  upon  the  dark  ages  when  from  feudalism  as 
a  stern  father,  and  the  Christian  church  as  a  cherishing  mother,  sprang  the 
modern  state  which  has  made  possible  for  us  all  the  material  prosperity 
of  the  present  day.  But  its  conquest  of  the  external  world  is  only  the 
result  of  ttyat  strength  of  united  action,  that  power  of  combination,  which 
springs  from  the  due  order  of  relations  among  individuals,  that  perfect 
adjustment  of  legal  rights  and  legal  duties  found  in  the  "due  pro- 
cess of  law,"  Perhaps  it  has  raised  the  individual  little  if  any  beyond  the 
classic  standard.  We  hear  frequent  complaints  that  it  has  not  made  him 
love  his  brother  as  himself.  Everybody  feels  keenly  that  it  has  not  made 
others  eager  to  subordinate  their  own  interests  to  his,  or  sacrifice  them- 
selves to  himself.  But  in  the  failure  of  this  ethical  ideal  it  is  a  great 
satisfaction  to  know  that  it  has  at  least  saved  the  weak  from  the  tyranny 
of  the  strong,  and  guarded  the  simple  from  the  snares  of  the  shrewd,  by 


M290681 


PUBLIC     EDUCATION. 


making  them  equal  before  the  law;  and  has  done  what  it  can  to  prevent 
the  most  highly  developed  and  highly  cultured  individual  from  keeping 
his  brother  beneath  his  feet,  as  he  did  without  let  or  hindrance,  in  the 
classic  age. 

I  know  it  has  often  been  said  that  the  ancient  state  was  elaborated  at 
the  expense  of  the  individual,  and  that  personal  freedom  and  personal 
development  are  the  achievement  of  modern  times.  As  we  have  taken 
the  word  polity  from  the  Greeks,  it  has  been  assumed  that  with  it  we 
have  learned  of  them  all  we  know  of.  politics:  and  that  their  chief  lesson 
to  us  has  been  that  of  merging  the  man  in  the  state,  and  perfecting  the 
organization  of  the  latter. 

In  part  I  believe  this  view  to  be  a  mistaken  one;  but  in  larger  part  I 
admit  it  to  be  true,  yet  not  inconsistent  with  what  I  have  said  before, 
that  individual  men  reached  almost  their  highest  development  in  Greece 
and  Rome,  while  the  nice  adjustment  of  their  reciprocal  rights  and  duties 
has  been  the  work  of  modern  times. 

Undoubtedly  the  city-state  was  strong,  almost  tyrannical  in  its  control 
of  the  citizen,in  the  classical  period— though  perhaps  less  so  in  reality  than 
in  the  theoretic  republic  of  Plato,  and  the  hardly  less  fanciful  constitution 
as  described  to  us  by  foreigners,  of  Sparta.  No  modern  state  or  king 
would  dare  to  disregard  the  vested  rights  or  the  personal  freedom  of  its 
subjects,as  the  fickle  demos  of  Athens  often  did.  But  this  was  not  through 
the  perfection  of  its  polity:  it  was  rather  the  brute  strength  of  the  mob. 
It  differed  from  modern  constitutional  government  as  the  will  of  the 
master  over  the  slave  differs  from  the  contract  between  employer  and 
employed.  The  one  is  the  first  crude  attempt  at  social  order,  the  other 
its  advanced  product;  and  as  slavery  bears  hard  on  the  masses,  while 
allowing  the  favorites  to  become  the  companions,  equals,  even  masters  of 
their  owners,  so  in  this  crude  and  arbitrary  form  of  polity  the  leading 
citizen,  the  rich  man,  the  popular  orator  or  the  favorite  sophist,  had 
chances  of  individual  development  that  could  never  be  shared  by  a  whole 
community  of  freemen.  As  Plato  rises  grandly  to  overshadow  modem 
thinkers— as  the  thunders  of  Demosthenes,  even  now  reverberating  in  the 
echoes  of  two  thousand  years,  drown  the  voice  of  every  modern  orator — 
so,  too,  we  look  in  vain  among  modern  millionaires,  in  the  House  of 
Lords  or  in  our  own  Senate,  for  a  figure  so  splendid  as  Pericles,  and  the 
finest  of  our  gilded  youth  seem  mere  gilded  counterfeits  beside  the 
brillianc  Alcibiades.  Even  in  those  fields  of  action  where  modern  inven- 
tions have  given  us  so  great  an  advantage,  as  in  warfare,  have  we  a 
modern  general  or  field-marshal  to  place  above  the  young  Greek  volun- 
teer who  came  out  of  the  ranks  to  save  his  10,000  companions  in  their 
darkest  despair,  and  led  them  through  a  hostile  empire  and  over  all  the 
opposition  of  the  great  King  to  the  spot  where  their  glad  eyes  again  beheld 
home,  safety,  all  that  life  held  dear,  in  the  dancing  waves  of  their  own 
sea  Thalatta!  Or  to  crown  all  with  a  single  instance,  study  Caius  Julius 
Crcsar,  in  all  the  details  of  his  brief  life,  as  calmly  and  critically  as  you 
can— the  politician,  the  man  of  pleasure,  the  augur,  the  consul,  the 


PUBLIC     EDUCATION. 


general,  the  conqueror  of  Gaul,  the  moulder  of  the  empire,  the  reformer 
of  the  world's  calendar  and  of  the  Roman  law,  the  orator,  the  historian — 
measure  him  as  closely  as  you  can  in  all  these  characters,  and  then,  if  you 
can,  match  him!  The  first  emperor  of  Rome  and  of  the  world,  it  was  his 
brilliant  personality  that  converted  the  common  title  of  a  military  com- 
mander into  the  proper  designation  of  the  highest  civil  dominion  over 
men  and  kings.  By  a  singular  coincidence  he  was  also  the  last  of  those 
whose  private  family  name  became  the  title  of  his  successor.  That  this 
was  a  common  practice  in  the  early  ages  may  be  inferred  from  many 
instances,  such  as  that  of  the  Pharaohs  of  Egypt.  I  know  of  no  other 
modern  example  but  this.  When  man's  aspirations  for  a  universal 
monarchy  came  nearest  totalization  in  the  Holy  Roman  Empire  of  the 
middle  ages,  they  called  the  monarch  of  all  Christian  men,  by  his  name, 
pronounced  if  not  spelled,  as  he  probably  spoke  it;  and  to-day  each 
European  monarch  that  claims  to  be  a  king  of  kings,  preeminent  even 
among  the  rulers  of  the  earth,  is  proud  to  name  himself  a  Kaiser. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  surpassing  excellence  of  the  modern  state 
seems  to  me  to  lie,  not  in  its  absorption  of  the  individual,  but  in  the  full 
and  equal  development  of  individual  characters  combined  with  the  widest 
variety  of  relations  between  them,  and  the  most  delicate  adjustment  of 
their  mutual  rights  and  duties.  In  all  classic  antiquity,— even  in  Roman 
law, — I  find  nothing  to  equal  the  definition  of  civil  liberty,  not  yet  a 
century  old,  as  freedom  to  do  all  that  is  consistent  with  an  equal  freedom 
on  the  part  of  every  fellow-citizen.  At  once  a  scientific  definition  and  a 
practical  test,  it  applies  to  all  concrete  rights  with  the  flexibility  of  an 
algebraic  formula:  it  measures  every  object  of  a  legal  right  or  legal  duty 
like  one  of  those  great  balances  that  can  weigh  a  ship  and  her  cargo,  or 
turn  with  every  drop  of  the  water  she  displaces.  Compare  it  with  the 
maxims  so  often  repeated  to-day,  as  if  their  classic  authors  had  uttered 
the  last  word  of  wisdom  on  this  head  two  thousand  years  ago.  "So  use 
your  own  rights  as  not  to  injure  others."  "He  who  is  usinghis  own  right 
cannot  be  injuring  another."  Unquestionably  one  of  these  is  a  charm- 
ing piece  of  erudition  —  especially  when  quoted  in  the  original — to 
adorn  a  decision  for  the  plaintiff;  and  the  other  is  equally  so  when 
the  decision  is  for  the  defendant.  But  what  help  does  either  or  both  give 
until  you  have  determined  what  is  the. right,  or  what  is  the  wrong. 

Do  not  understand  me  in  this  as  claiming  pert'ectness  for  modern  law 
or  infallibility  for  those  who  dispense  it.  No  one  will  admit  its  imper- 
fections more  candidly  than  those  who  know  it  best.  Ask  the  judge, 
who  for  almost  a  life-time  has  given  to  its  administration  the  powers  of 
one  of  the  soundest  of  human  intellects,  and  a  conscience  as  spotless  as 
ever  ruled  a  human  breast.  Ask  the  eminent  counsel,  whose  deep  learn- 
ing has  never  been  prostituted  to  an  unworthy  call.  I  appeal  to  them 
for  the  weight  their  testimony  will  lend.  But  perhaps  no  man  can  feel 
the  mistakes  and  imperfections  of  the  law  more  profoundly  than  one  whose 
humbler  task  it  has  been  for  years  to  repeat  to  beginners  the  mere  A.  B. 
C.,  the  fundamental  lessons  —what  should  be  the  primary  truths  of  the 


PUBLIC    EDUCATION. 


law.  He  will  never  claim  for  it  infallibility.  But  if  he  knows  anything  of 
its  history  for  the  seven  or  eight  centuries  of  its  modern  life,  he  will  tell 
you  that  it  has  constantly  been  enlarging  its  beneficial  influence  over 
human  actions,  and  the  reciprocal  powers  of  every  man  over  the  conduct 
of  his  fellows.  It  has  enabled  him  to  claim  at  first  safety  from  wanton 
attack  on  person  or  property— then  from  fraudulent  injury  under  a 
specious  guise — then  care  and  diligence  to  avoid  even  indirect  harm  to 
one's  neighbor — and  at  last  self-restraint  and  watchful  forethought  in 
the  use  of  his  own  possessions  lest  he  endanger  that  neighbor  in  the  like 
or  equal  use.  Even  the  mistakes  and  fictions  of  modern  law  seem  to 
have  tended,  or  to  have  been  over-ruled  to  the  same  end.  The  confusion 
of  law  and  ethics  under  the  name  of  the  Law  of  Nature,  and  its  antag- 
onist theory  of  the  social  compact  were  alike  herein.  In  this  respect,  at 
least,  the  merit  of  the  latter  lay  in  its  baseless  and  visionary  nature.  No 
man  could  prove  the  terms  of  that  original  contract,  for  no  man  could 
prove  its  existence.  Hence  every  generation  was  free  to  restate  these 
terms  for  itself  in  accordance  with  its  highest  conception  of  social  order 
and  man's  nature  and  destiny.  It  constantly  led  them  to  a  higher  ideal 
while  the  patriarchal  theory,  as  then  understood,  perpetuated  primitive 
tyranny.  Something  of  the  same  character  has  descended  from  the 
social  compact  to  its  offspring,  the  implied  contract  of  modern  English 
law.  New  duties  of  man  to  man,  almost  numberless,  have  become  legal- 
ly enf  orcible  by  the  beneficient  fiction  that  one  shall  be  supposed  to  have 
agreed  to  do  whatever  injustice  or  right  he  equitably  should  do  for  an- 
other. 

I  have  dwelt  so  long  on  the  contrast  of  these  two  great  periods  that  I 
have  left  myself  scant  time  for  the  main  purpose  of  my  inquiry— the 
causes  of  that  difference.  I  say  causes,  for  they  are  many.  The  great 
phenomena  of  history  are  too  complex  to  be  traced  to  a  single  or  a 
simple  origin.  We  have  had  indeed  a  pseudo  philosophy  of  history  that 
loves  to  fix  attention  on  some  trivial  fact  in  the  past,  and  say,  Lo!  if  this 
had  happened  otherwise,  all  after  history  had  been  different!  As  when 
Sir  Francis  Palgrave  gravely  tells  us  that  if  Duke  Richard,  of  Normandy, 
had  not  one  fine  morning  happened  to  see  the  baker's  daughter,  Arlotta, 
washing  her  feet  in  a  brook,  there  would  have  been  no  William  the  Con- 
queror, and  therefore  no  Norman-  Conquest,  no  Magna  Charta,  no 
modern  England.  Such  "philosophical  reflections"  are  the  merest  tricks 
of  an  artificial  rhetoric.  No  human  intellect  can  compute  the  number  of 
infinitessimal  changes  of  person  and  detail  that  might  have  taken  place 
at  every  step  of  the  long  pilgrimage  of  the  race  from  savagery  to  civiliza- 
tion, without  changing  the  order  of  the  march  or  the  regular  develop- 
ment of  each  event  in  it  from  all  that  preceded.  It  is  only  the  inter- 
weaving of  many  causes  to  produce  each  single  result,  the  effect  of  a 
single  causation  upon  many  and  unlike  events,  that  prevents  us  from 
tracing  these  grand  laws  of  human  evolution  upon  which  individuals 
and  single  facts  have  as  little  influence  as  the  pieces  on  the  chess  board 
have  upon  the  brain  that  orders  the  game.  Men  are  nothing  but  pawns; 


PUBLIC    EDUCATION. 


the  world,  the  moral  universe  as  well  as  the  physical  is  governed  by 
eternal  law.  We  can  only  read  that  law  in  history,  as  we  read  the  com- 
mon law  in  its  past  decisions,  which  have  .the  same  weight  whether  it  is 
John  Doe  or  John  Jacob  Astor  that  is  party  to  the  record.  So  too,  in  the 
great  laws  that  rule  all  history,  as  in  common  law  of  the  courts,  it  is  not 
the  law  itself  that  we  read,  but  only  its  reflection  in  facts:  held-,  that  on 
such  and  such  antecedents  the  law  ordains  such  a  consequence;  the 
mighty,  unwritten  law  that  so  ordains  and  "holds,"  no  human  tongue 
can  formulate  with  authority.  (Forgive  me  if  I  seem  to  carry  out  the 
comparison  with  professional  pedantry.  I  do  it  because  I  believe  it  to 
be  true.  You  who  are  to  deal  with  the  common  law  in  its  most  practi- 
cal and  narrowest  sense,  will  do  your  work  better  and  far  more  intelli- 
gently, if  you  take  with  you  the  conviction  that  its  methods  and  author- 
ities are  those  of  all  human  reasoning  on  abstract  subjects,  and  that 
courts  and  judges  do  not  make  the  law.) 

Hence  it  is  only  by  a  large  abstraction  that  we  can  say  of  any  great 
event  or  any  great  phenomenon  of  life  that  it  is  caused  by  any  other. 
This,  working  in  unison  with  all  contemporary  causes,  has  produced, 
among  all  future  phenomena,  influenced  by  it,  in  a  special  and  evident 
line  of  causation,  that.  It  is  only  in  this  carefully  guarded  manner  that  I 
venture  to  state  the  two  propositions  to  which  at  last  I  ask  your  atten- 
tion as  the  end  and  purpose  of  all  I  have  to  say: 

First,  that  the  peculiar  feature  of  modern  civilization  which  I  have 
tried  to  point  out, — the  mutual  control  of  the  fellow  members  of  society 
over  each  other's  conduct,  for  the  welfare  and  happiness  of  all,  by  law  in 
the  form  of  reciprocal  rights  and  duties, — is  the  result,  in  large 
measure — perhaps  we  may  even  say  in  the  largest  measure— of  another 
factor  of  modern  civilization,  i.  e.,  public  education. 

And  second,  that  public  education  unknown  to  the  ancient  world,  be- 
gan with,  has  always  been  rooted  in,  and  must  live  or  die,  flourish  or  de- 
cline with  the  University. 

Public  education  does  not  necessarily  mean  free  schools;  though  of  all 
the  senses  we  Americans  attach  to  the  word  liberty,  there  is  none  more 
precious  than  the  freedom  of  the  poorest  child  in  the  land  to  enter  the 
school  house  without  a  fee  to  teacher  or  to  district.  I  hope  the  time  is 
coming  when  every  boy  and  girl  of  Iowa  may  come  as  a  right  to  the 
highest  school  in  the  State,  and  to  all  its  departments.  But  I  must  add 
that  if  to-day  some  fairy  could  give  me  the  needful  power,  and  the 
needful  wisdom,  to  make  of  the  whole  educational  system  what  it  should 
be,  I  think  there  are  other  tasks  that  would  claim  the  first  place,  rather 
than  a  mere  abolition  of  tuition  fees.  In  one  sense,  this  and  most  of 
our  western  schools,  are  free  already.  Every  young  man  or  young  woman 
who  is  thoroughly  in  earnest  to  get  an  education,  can  earn  in  a  moderate 
time  the  money  necessary  to  take  their  course  throughout.  I  have  my- 
self known  not  a  few  that  did  it;  and  knowing  what  men  and  women, 
what  lawyers,  and  physicians  and  teachers  and  engineers,  they  have 
made  of  themselves  by  their  patience  and  industry  and  persistence  of  pur- 


PUBLIC     EDUCATION. 


pose,  I  am  not  sure  but  they  are  better  off  for  the  obstacles  they  have 
surmounted: — obstacles  that  would  have  deterred  weaker  men,  such  as  I 
have  known  elsewhere  tempted  into  a  profession  for  which  they  have  no 
real  fitness,  by  the  mistaken  kindness  of  parents  or  the  largess  of  some 
society  or  fund. 

The  education  here  given  is  public  even  now  in  the  most  important 
sense;  it  is  supplied  mainly  at  the  cost  of  the  entire  public,  with  no  im- 
plied contract  for  the  maintenance  of  any  party,  creed  or  section;  and  it 
is  open  to  all  alike  as  a  means  of  direct  preparation  for  their  work  in 
life,  as  chosen  by  their  own  free  will,  uninlluenced  by  their  teachers. 
Perhaps  we  hardly  appreciate  the  value  of  this,  since  it  has  become  the 
dominant  idea  of  higher  education  in  this  country.  To  know  what  an  ad- 
vance is  already  made,  will  require  some  comparison  with  the  ages  in 
which  it  was  unknown. 

Those  of  you  who  recall  Macaulay's  brilliant  sketch  of  the  education 
furnished  by  the  daily  life  of  Athens,  may  think  1  am  unjust  to  the 
classic  age  when  I  call  public  education  an  innovation  of  modern  life. 
But  one  needs  to  penetrate  little  beneath  the  surface,  to  see  that  ancient 
instruction  was  always  in  the  hands  of  a  small  and  privileged  class,  who 
sought  to  perpetuate  their  own  caste  and  privileges  rather  than  to  diffuse 
the  light  of  education  as  widely  as  possible;  and  further,  that  its  method 
invariably  was  to  transmit  to  pupils  what  the  teacher  thought  it  need- 
ful or  advantageous  for  them  to  learn,  instead  of  opening  wide  the  doors 
of  knowledge,  and  prompting  all  who  came  to  enter  for  themselves  and 
appropriate  all  they  could  seize  and  master  for  their  own  advancement 
in  learning  and  in  active  life.  It  is  in  the  absence  of  these  two  elements 
of  genuine  education  that  I  find  the  difference  of  which  I  have  already 
said  so  much. 

So  far  as  1  know  there  is  no  trace  in  all  ancient  history,  of  one  people's 
having  studied  the  language  or  literature  of  another  as  a  means  of  edu- 
cation. The  Greeks  were  not  likely  to  hold  in  such  esteem  the  jargon  of 
barbarians.  Even  the  singular  interest  of  Herodotus  in  Egyptian  cus- 
toms may  have  given  him  the  reputation  of  a  mere  collector  of  foreign 
fables  which  has  always  clung  to  him  until  modern  students  have  per- 
ceived the  true  value  of  his  matter.  If  there  is  an  exception  to  this 
narrow  contempt  of  all  foreign  culture,  it  is  the  Roman  affectation  of 
Greek  thoughts  and  phrases;  and  even  that  seems  to  have  been  the  mark 
of  a  small  coterie  whom  their  contemporaries  regarded  much  as  Chaucer 
did  the  Abbess's  affectation  of  French  "after  the  schole  of  Stratford — atte 
Bowe."  Of  real  linguistic  and  critical  study,  of  world-culture,  as  the 
Germans  say,  there  is  not  even  a  germ  traceable  anywhere  till  the  re- 
vival of  letters  and  of  Greek  came  together  in  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth 
centuries — three  hundred  years  after  the  rise  of  the  first  great  Univer- 
sity at  Bologna. 

Wherever  we  find  anything  that  can  be  called  systematic  education  in 
the  ancient  world — that  is,  anything  beyond  the  mere  training  of  children 
in  the  necessary  arts  of  life,  such  as  even  the  beasts  and  birds  give  to 


PUBLIC    EDUCATION. 


their  young — it  is  invariably  the  privilege  of  a  small  and  chosen  class. 
What  is  still  more  significant  it  consists  in  the  imparting  to  these  of  a 
body  of  traditional  learning — their  formation  by  the  hands  and  uniler" 
the  arbitrary  direction  of  the  teachers.  Thus  "the  wisdom  of  the 
Egyptians"  was  confined  with  jealous  care  to  the  close  corporation  of 
the  priesthood.  So  it  was  apparently  with  the  Eastern  magi,  while 
even  the  sons  of  the  nobles  had  to  be  content  with  a  course  that  taught 
them  only  "to  ride,  to  draw  the  bow  and  to  speak  the  truth!"  Pythagoras 
.and  all  the  sages  of  Greece  taught  their  most  important  lessons  only  to 
an  esoteric  circle,  and  the  sophists,  to  the  sons  of  the  wealthy.  The  chief 
offense  of  Socrates  against  the  orthodoxy  of  his  age  seems  to  have  been 
in  his  method  of  instructing  any  youth  of  bright  parts  whom  he  met  in 
his  walks,  though  even  he  made  no  effort  to  educate  youth  in  general. 
In  Rome,  everything  that  we  should  call  professional  education,  was 
long  the  secret  of  the  patricians.  From  them  it  passed  to  be  the  preroga- 
tive of  the  rich.  It  is  not  inconsistant  with  this — though  it  sounds  to 
modern  ears  like  a  paradox — that  the  best  educated  men  and  the 
teachers  of  rich  men's  sons  were  often  themselves  slaves.  It  would  have 
been  a  much  greater  wonder  if  a  poor  freeman  had  ever  had  a  chance  to 
get  an  education ;  but  we  hear  of  not  a  single  instance.  The  rich  knight 
or  Senator  could  buy  education  in  a  slave  if  a  father's  care  had  not  be- 
stowed it  on  him,  or  his  own  caprice  or  stupidity  had  refused  it.  In 
either  case  knowledge  was  in  safe  hands,  conservative  hands,  not  likely 
to  peril  the  established  order  of  things  by  innovations.  Had  a  bright 
proletarius  had  the  opportunity  to  acquire  it,  he  might  have  discovered 
something  new  and  thus  periled  the  established  order.  But  naturally  the 
proletariat  was  content  with  panem  et  cir census.  When  the  Western 
Empire  went  down  like  a  huge  ship,  foundering  beneath  the  waves  of 
barbarism,  much  of  this  traditional  learning  disappeared  with  it,  only  to 
be  recovered  centuries  afterward,  as  men  find  gold  and  jewels  in  the 
wreck  of  some  Spanish  galleon  long  at  the  bottom  of  the  sea.  But  its 
methods  were  perpetuated  through  the  Dark  Ages  by  the  church — aided 
by  princes  like  Charlemagne  and  Alfred.  These  did  their  best  to  in- 
struct in  the  traditional  learning  the  rude  races  that  had  become  domi- 
nant in  Western  Europe.  After  a  time,  every  royal  palace  and  every 
bishop's  seat  had  its  school,  teaching  the  trivium  and  the  quadrivium — 
after  the  most  approved  methods.  The  clergy  seem  to  have  been 
specially  active  in  gathering  into  these  schools  the  brightest  minds  they 
could  find  and  instructing  them  in  all  that  they  themselves  knew.  They 
succeeded  in  making  Latin  the  language  of  the  Roman  church,  the 
tongue  of  all  educated  men.  Their  methods  of  instruction  were  prob- 
ably little  if  any  inferior  to  those  of  their  predecessors  in  the  classic 
times.  They  had  a  new  race  to  deal  with,  rude  and  uncultivated,  but 
eager,  ambitious  and  capable.  Single  minds  like  Eginhard,  Alcuin,  Eri- 
gena,  Lanfranc,  arose  to  show  that  the  capacity  of  the  old  method  for 
training  the  individual,  was  not  yet  entirely  effete.  Each  episcopal 
school  had  no  doubt  its  group  of  these,  that  never  attained  posthumous 


10  PUBLIC    EDUCATION. 


celebrity.  But  they  failed  to  make  any  lasting  impression  on  the  great 
mass,  or  even  on  the  most  active  leading  minds  of  the  class  that 
governed  the  world.  They  added  nothing  to  the  traditional  stock  of 
knowledge  and  aroused  no  fresh  desire  for  it.  The  vast  majority  of  men 
had  never  known  that  desire,  even  in  the  classic  age.  The  church  ab- 
sorbed and  satisfied  all  who  might  have  continued  the  higher  cultivation 
of  Greece  and  Rome.  The  most  active  and  ambitious  minds  found  in 
that  cultivation  nothing  to  their  purpose  and  neglected  it. 

We  are  accustomed  to  think  of  the  Dark  Ages  as  a  time  of  mere 
eclipse,  —when  the  lights  that  had  previously  illuminated  the  world  were 
darkened  for  six  or  eight  centuries,  only  to  shine  out  afterward  with 
increased  lustre.  We  thus  leave  out  of  view  an  important  fact:  that  in 
many  regions  of  Europe  where  the  former  light  shone  with  greatest 
lustre  it  went  out  then  never  to  be  rekindled;  and  that  the  provinces  where 
the  newer  light  shines  brightest  now  are  those  least  brilliant  in  the  earlier 
time.  What  has  become  of  the  eastern  half  of  the  empire  which  makes 
such  a  figure  just  before  its  decline?  These  were  prosperous,  wealthy, 
enlightened  countries,  while  Gaul  and  Britain  were  scarcely  out  of 
barbarism.  The  entire  southern  coast  of  the  Mediterranean  was  civilized 
as  early  as  Italy  itself.  All  felt  the  Dark  Ages  alike,  but  these  never  saw 
the  sun  of  civilization  rise  again.  It  was  not  a  mere  eclipse,  but  rather 
the  waning  of  an  ancient  luminary,  the  rise  of  a  new.  The  old  slowly 
expired  under  the  bushel  of  the  church.  The  new  was  set  upon  a  mighty 
candlestick,  as  new  as  itself,  called  university, 

The  twelfth  century  was  not  a  favorable  period  for  literary  activity 
or  improvements  in  the  science  of  education.  Even  the  bishops  and 
clergy  were  too  busy  in  the  great  contest  for  supremacy  between  church 
and  state  to  pay  much  attention  to  improvements  in  the  trivium,  or  what 
we  should  call  new  theories  of  normal  instruction.  It  was  a  period  of 
"storm  and  stress"  in  which  men  were  busy  with  the  most  practical 
questions  — how  each  should  save  himself  and  his  possessions  from 
violence;  how  neighbors  should  live  together  in  peace  and  security,  yet 
without  giving  themselves  up  to  the  tender  mercy  of  lords,  feudal  or 
clerical.  The  descendants  of  the  northern  barbarians  who  had  never 
known  a  master,  and  those  of  the  Roman  provincials  who  had  never 
lived  free  from  a  master,  were  seeking  some  common  ground  on  which 
they  could  meet  with  equal  rights.  Moreover,  Europe  was  full  of  young, 
strong  and  ambitious  men,  who  sought  a  career,  but  could  find  it  neither 
in  brutal  fights  nor  in  the  church.  Among  these,  somehow,  the  news  got 
abroad  that  an  obscure  teacher  of  rhetoric,  in  Italy,  had  turned  up  some 
volumes  of  the  musty  Roman  law  to  find  good  rhetorical  exercises  for  his 
pupils,  and  had  got  them  so  much  interested  in  it,  that  he  had  under- 
taken to  explain  the  hard  words,  and  let  them  write  down  the  explana- 
tion between  the  lines.  It  was  not  the  first  attempt  to  teach  law,  for  the 
Lombard  law  had  been  glossed  and  taught  for  a  century  at  Pavia.  But 
that  had  never  interested  anybody  but  Lombards,  and  the  thought  of 
studying  a  foreign  law  for  its  scientific  value  was  as  yet  to  come.  The 


PUBLIC    EDUCATION.  II 


ancient  Eoman  law  was  quite  a  different  thing.  The  glamour  of  the 
Roman  name  was  still  powerful.  The  Roman  empire  was  the  one  great 
successful  state  of  which  their  histories  told.  Charlemagne,  and~lhe 
emperor  of  all  Christian  men,  the  only  potentate  that  stood  on  a  level  with 
the  Pope,  still  claimed  authority  as  heirs  of  that  empire.  One  could  read 
a  text  of  its  law  to  a  bishop  or  to  a  feudal  lord  with  some  hope  of  over- 
awing his  caprice.  Even  the  monk  Gratian  had  collected  the  Canon  law 
of  the  church  in  imitation  of  it,  and  Obertus  de  Orto  and  Gerardus  Niger, 
the  authors  of  the  Law  of  Feuds,  had  admitted  its  authority.  The  Arch- 
bishop of  Canterbury  himself  had  brought  home  from  Italy  a  young  man 
who  knew  all  about  the  Code  and  Pandects,  to  help  him  in  his  own  law- 
suits with  the  papal  legate,  the  king's  brother. 

According  to  the  realistic  belief  of  that  age  there  could  be  but  one  true 
science  of  law,  as  of  mathematics  or  astronomy.  Every  country  might 
have  its  customs,  differing  like  its  climate,  but  this  was  universal  truth, 
that  could  be  learned  in  Italy  as  well  as  at  home,  and  having  been  learned 
in  Italy,  could  be  put  to  practical  uses  at  home.  Hence  aspiring  young 
men  from  all  Europe  took  the  road  to  Bologna  by  thousands.  Very 
possibly  they  went  in  greater  numbers  because  no  preparatory  course  in 
the  Bishop's  school  was  necessary.  Nobody  asked  whether  they  had 
gone  through  thetriviam  or  thequadrivium  any  more  than  whether  they 
were  orthodox  or  heretical,  rich  or  poor;  to  the  great  scandal  and  regret 
of  all  experienced  educators  of  the  old  school.  Soon  they  were  there  in 
such  numbers  that  some  kind  of  school  government  was  necessary.  They 
elected  a  rector  or  president  out  of  their  own  number,  and  made  a  set  of 
college  laws  for  themselves.  They  organized  themselves  into  clubs  called 
nations  because  each  comprised  all  of  a  certain  nationality.  Finally  the 
Pope  was  induced  to  give  them  the  power  of  self-government  by  erecting 
them  into  a  corporation  or  university.  That  was  the  meaning  of  the 
name  which  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  number  of  branches  taught.  The 
fiction  that  a  university  is  so  called  because  it  teaches  universal  knowl- 
edge, or  that  the  name  has  any  connection  whatever  with  the  course  of 
study,  is  of  much  later  origin.  The  citizens  of  Bologna  found  it  a  good 
thing  to  feed  them,  let  lodgings  to  them,  etc.  Probably  they  had  a  good 
influence  on  the  price  of  house  rent  and  vacant  lots  in  Bologna.  Conse- 
quently Pavia,  Florence  and  other  cities,  soon  had  universities  of  their 
own;  and  popular  lecturers,  who  could  draw  many  students,  were 
salaried  from  the  public  treasury,  as  a  good  way  of  reducing  the  city 
taxes. 

It  would  take  far  too  long  to  describe  the  extension  of  universities  in 
Europe  to  Paris,  Montpelier,  Oxford,  Prague,  Heidelberg,  etc.,  or  even 
the  extension  of  the  system  to  other  branches  of  learning,  as  medicine, 
theology,  or  the  humanities.  Salerno  became  famous  for  teaching 
medicine.  Others  were  popular  now  with  one  class  of  students,  now 
with  another,  as  different  professors  came  and  went.  But  all  were  public 
schools  in  the  sense  that  they  opened  their  doors  to  all  comers  who 
sought  to  study  in  them;  and  that  the  vast  majority  of  those  who  came 


12  PUBLIC    EDUCATION. 


to  them  came  to  prepare  themselves  in  one  way  or  another  for  active 
life,to  make  their  way  in  the  world;  and  whatever  else  they  learned  there, 
they  learned  the  art  of  living  in  the  world  on  equal  terms  with  their 
fellows.  The  "dark  ages,"  as  modern  pedantry  still  reckons  them,  were 
not  yet  past.  The  "renaissance"  of  classic  art  and  literature  was  yet  far 
in  the  future;  but  in  these  rude,  ill-disciplined  bands  of  professional 
students— a  mob,  rather  than  a  well -organized  and  properly  graded  insti- 
tution of  learning, — there  was  evolved  for  the  first  time  the  cardinal 
principle  of  public  education— an  education  of  the  people,  by  the  people, 
for  the  people,  if  I  may  so  use  the  words  made  classical  by  that  great 
American  who  was  himself  so  grand  an  illustration  of  its  central  truth. 
For  this  is,  I  take  it,  the  central  truth  of  public  education  as  a  modern 
discovery  unknown  to  the  classic  world:  that  the  main  factor  in  all  true 
education  is  the  pupil,  and  not  the  teacher:  that  its  courses,  its  methods, 
its  results,  are  shaped  not  by  what  the  latter  wishes  to  impart,  but  by 
what  the  pupil  wants  and  needs  to  learn;  and  that  whatever  the  school 
law  or  the  college  regulations  may  say,  the  real  governance  of  the  school 
—governance  in  the  good  old  English  and  Roman  sense  of  pilotage— will 
ever  be  with  the  learners  and  not  the  learned.  Hence  we  see  why  this 
new  truth  first  was  seen  in  the  university,  the  school  which  comes  most 
immediately  in  contact  with  actual  life,— where  it  was  easiest  for  all  to 
see  the  direct  practical  consequence  of  what  they  learned.  Only  by  slow 
degrees  has  it  gone  farther  and  mastered  the  intermediate  and  primary 
schools  more  remote  from  that  influence.  It  is  the  university  that  has 
given  us  our  common  schools,  and  not  vice  versa-,  for  all  public  education 
depends  mainly  on  the  students'  sense  of  need  to  prepare  for  something 
higher  and  beyond  them.  It  is  the  university  that  has  really  given  us 
free  schools;  for  there  men  first  learned  to  consider  education,  not  as  a 
privilege  to  be  bestowed  on  those  already  favored  beyond  their  fellows, 
but  as  an  equal  right  of  all  to  the  means  of  doing  well  whatever  work  in 
life  they  had  to  do.  It  is  the  university  that  makes  it  worth  while  to 
sustain  them. 

We  are  now  all  agreed— even  those  who  oppose  anything  higher,— 
that  the  State  should  secure  to  all  its  citizens  a  common  English  educa- 
tion, the  power  to  read  and  write,  with  the  other  branches  taught  in  our 
common  schools.  But  how  many  go  a  step  further  and  ask  themselves 
why  ?  In  what  consists  the  advantage  to  t/ie  State  of  having  all  its  citi- 
zens able  to  read  and  write,  instead  of  leaving  them  in  the  condition  of 
the  laboring  classes  in  many  civilized  countries— the  condition  in  which 
the  great  mass  of  our  own  English  forefathers  were  a  very  few  centuries 
ago,— dependent  on  the  parish  priest  and  the  schoolmaster  for  all  the 
reading  and  writing  done  in  the  community  ?  The  English  yeoman  of 
300  years  ago,  worked  and  fought  as  sturdily,  ate  as  much,  prayed  and 
praised  God  rather  more,  perhaps  on  the  whole  enjoyed  this  life  as 
much  as  his  descendants  and  had  at  least  as  firm  a  faith  in  a  better  life 
beyond.  What  have  we  gained  by  teaching  him  to  read  and  write  ?— or  to 
anticipate  the  first  answer,  by  increasing  his  intelligence  V  Surely  all 


PUBLIC    EDUCATION. 


this  vast  expenditure  of  our  school  system  is  not  made  merely  for  the 
purpose  of  enabling  a  nation  of  men  who  can  but  just  read  and  write,  to 
exchange  their  ideas  on  paper  rather  than  by  word  of  mouth;  nor  even 
to  enable  them  to  read  the  newspapers.  No  man  will  see  the  truth  of 
this  position,  on  its  face,  better  than  those  it  directly  concerns.  Go  to 
the  farm-house  and  ask  the  plain  sensible  couple  you  will  find  there, 
reading  perhaps  the  Bible  on  Sunday,  and  the  newspaper  of  a  winter 
evening,  but  working  early  and  late,  day  after  day,  that  their  boys  and 
girls  may  go  to  school,  and  one  or  more  of  them  to  the  Academy  or  Col- 
lege—ask them  if  they  would  set  such  a  value  on  their  children's  school- 
ing, if  the  only  use  they  were  ever  to  make  of  it  was  to  read  the  produc- 
tions of  other  men  no  better  educated  than  themselves,  or  write  down 
the  same  thoughts  that  prompt  their  daily  speech  V  They  see,  they  feel, 
deeper  than  the  Faculty  of  a  University  do,  that  the  chief  end  and  pur- 
pose and  value  of  reading  is,  that  it  enables  us  to  learn  from  those  who 
are  wiser  and  better  than  we  are,  but  whom  we  never  can  hope  to  meet. 
1  do  not  claim  that  universities  have  always  been  true  to  the  theory  of 
public  education  any  more  than  I  would  assert  that  they  have  adhered 
to  the  simple  organization  of  the  twelfth  century,  or  that  university 
men  have  always  written  just  such  books  as  pious  parents  would  wish 
their  sons  and  daughters  in  the  common  school  to  read.  It  would  have 
been  impossible  to  keep  up  so  many  great  institutions  for  seven  cen- 
turies on  the  simple  lines  upon  which  the  first  universities  were  formed. 
The  most  we  can  truthfully  say  is  that  wherever  universities  existed 
public  education  was  more  widely  diffused  than  where  they  were  un- 
known, and  that  they  have  never  at  the  worst  been  so  inaccessible  to 
the  poor  man's  son  as  ancient  schools,  or  so  sterile  of  free  thought  as  the 
church  schools  of  the  dark  ages.  No  doubt  there  came  very  soon  a 
strong  reaction  from  the  crude  and  simple  methods  of  the  primitive 
university.  Some  institutions  were  founded  by  kings  and  bishops  on 
purpose  to  harness  the  new  and  untamed  force  and  drive  it  in  the  reins 
of  established  power,— as  in  the  case  of  Naples.  The  entire  force  of  pro- 
fessional teachers  of  the  day  was  ready  to  help  in  the  task.  They  pro- 
foundly distrusted  this  new-fangled  method  of  letting  the  young  learn 
what  they  felt  the  need  of  instead  of  pursuing  the  trivium  and  the 
quadrivium.  The  old  teacher  almost  inevitably  becomes  a  conservative. 
He  has  begun  by  teaching  children  to  know  the  straight  i  and  the 
round  o.  Years  of  practice  made  him  perfect  in  his  art  and  his  pride  lies 
in  the  symmetrical  joining  of  the  perfect  circle  until  he  forgets  that  the 
perfectly  rounded  o  of  the  school  year  marks  only  a  cypher.  The  per- 
fectly drilled  pupil  ends  it  at  the  very  point  where  it  began;  the  circle  is 
perfect,— and  empty.  Too  many  of  our  most  elaborate  and  be-lauded 
school  courses  are  typified  by  that  beautifully  rounded  o — and  the 
classes  whose  interest  lies  in  keeping  the  great  majority  of  mankind  in  a 
perpetual  tutelage,  are  always  ready  to  help  the  instructor  who  can  make 
the  roundest  o's  with  the  least  in  them.  The  more  industrious  and  con- 
scientious he  is,  the  easier  they  find  it  to  reduce  his  labor  to  that  of 
the  mill-horse  in  his  perpetual  round. 


14  PUBLIC     EDUCATION. 


More  frequently  perhaps  the  public  university  has  been  reduced  to  a 
mere  machine  for  moulding  human  clay  into  uniform  bricks,  by  the 
unconscious  working  of  this  conservative  habit,  strengthened  by  the  in- 
fluence of  wealth.  Oxford  and  Cambridge  are  noted  examples.  What 
teacher  in  either  has  written  a  book  for  poor  but  earnest  students  since 
Vacarius?  The  early  divorce  of  its  legal  school  from  the  practical 
studies  of  the  Inns  of  Court  may  largely  account  for  this;  and  the 
formation  of  that  real  university— as  Fortescue  calls  it,  and  as  it  was 
for  a  time,— may  almost  make  us  forgive  it. 

J  do  not  name  the  great  English  universities  in  reproach  or  in  for- 
getfulness  of  the  great  services  they  have  rendered  to  an  important  class 
of  English  society;  but  only  to  illustrate  the  danger  there  has  always 
been  and  still  is,  wherever  education  is  regarded  as  a  private  interest, — 
the  particular  prerogative  of  a  rank,  of  a  church,  of  an  order  of  teachers, 
of  any  body  less  than  the  whole  community.  For  the  same  end  I  have 
selected  the  term  public  education  as  most  expressive  of  the  advance 
made  in  modern  times  and  have  tried  to  point  out  its  character  as  a 
public  duty  and  public  interest;— duty  to  all  that  are  to  be  active  mem- 
bers of  the  State,  interest  as  preparing  the  way  for  that  harmonious 
play  of  reciprocal  rights  and  duties  among  men,  that  is  the  characteristic 
of  modern  civil  liberty.  Thus  in  a  sense  far  higher  than  mere  pecuniary 
support  or  normal  instruction,  it  is  the  proper  work  of  the  State. 

I  desire  to  see  the  responsibility  of  the  State  for  public  education 
fully  recognized,  because  I  believe  that  in  that  way  can  the  best  interests 
of  such  education  be  secured  for  the  future, — not  for  the  next  genera- 
tion, not  for  the  next  century,  but  for  the  many  centuries  through  which 
as  we  may  reasonably  hope  will  extend  the  life  of  the  State.  Nothing  is 
better  settled  by  experience  than  that  our  institutions  for  high- 
er education  must  be  permanent  and  enduring  to  do  good  work. 
The  best  organization  for  the  common  school  is  simple  and  inexpensive; 
it  may  even  be  the  mere  succession  of  "summer  school"  and  "winter 
school"  in  which  so  many  millions  of  Americans  have  learned  all  they 
know  of  book-learning,  renewing  its  youth  and  ending  its  brief  existence 
with  each  recurring  season.  The  High  School  demands  more  machinery, 
teachers  of  more  experience  and  longer  consecutive  terms,  books,  appa- 
ratus arid  other  aids  that  cannot  be  renewed  every  year.  Still  the  High 
School  may  change  completely  with  every  set  of  youth  that  pass  through 
its  course  of  three  or  four  years  and  change  for  the  better.  Much  of  the 
best  work  that  has  been  done  in  our  High  Schools  and  Academies,  has 
been  done  by  young  men  and  women  to  whom  the  teacher's  desk  was 
only  a  temporary  station  for  a  year  or  two,  between  the  close  of  their 
own  instruction  and  the  entrance  upon  active  life.  And  so  I  believe  it 
will  always  be.  Talk  as  we  may  about  elevating  and  separating  the 
teachers'  profession,  I  do  not  believe  that  we  shall  ever  see  our  common 
schools  and  High  Schools  all  in  the  hands  of  life-long  pro- 
fessional teachers.  Nor  do  I  desire  to  see  it,  either  for  the  sake  of  the 
scholars  or  for  that  of  the  teachers  themselves,  to  whom  a  year  or 


PUBLIC    EDUCATION.  15 


two  of  such  experience  is  simply  invaluable.  But  when  we  reach 
the  College,  and  still  more  the  University,  we  find  ourselves  under 
very  different  conditions.  These  cannot  be  created  in  a  day  or  a  year. 
It  is  riot  merely  because  the  libraries,  and  cabinets,  and  laboratories,  cost 
very  large  sums  of  money ;  it  is  not  even  because  they  must  gather  from 
all  parts  of  the  country  men  learned  and  skillful,  who  have  already  spent 
years  in  mastering  their  respective  subjects,  and  who  must  be  asked  to 
life-long  positions  if  they  are  to  be  had  at  all;  it  is  all  this,  but  it  is 
something  more  than  this  that  gives  a  great  university  that  character, 
that  life  of  its  own,  which  makes  it  an  honor  and  a  profit  to  be  educated 
there,  and  to  carry  away  its  diploma.  A  rich  man  may  lavish  his 
millions  upon  a  new-born  college  because,  perhaps,  its  sponsers  in  bap- 
tism have  given  his  name  to  it;  Uutit  will  be  generations  before  its  gradu- 
ates go  out  from  it  with  the  feeling  of  love  and  gratitude  and  profound 
respect  with  which  middle-aged  and  grey-haired  men  all  over  this  broad 
land  look  back  to  the  red  brick  walls  and  scanty  appliances  of  some  little 
ill-provided  New  England  college,  whose  hard-working,  poorly-paid  pro- 
fessors, teach  in  the  same  rooms  where  he  and  they  sat  together  as  class- 
mates many  years  ago,  and  whose  noblest  and  best  endowment  is  the 
long  roll  of  honored  names  that  fill  the  many  issues  of  the  triennial  cata- 
logue. It  is  the  old  and  hallowed  associations  of  the  name  that  make 
them  love  to  call  Bowdoin  or  Dartmouth  or  Williams  or  Amherst  by  that 
sweetest  of  all  names,  Alma  Mater;  and  it  is  this  reverence  and  affection 
for  the  cherishing  and  cherished  mother  of  our  souls  that  forms  one  of  the 
best,  if  not  the  very  best  part,  of  a  college  education!  How  many 
Americans  there  are  who  would  feel  that  a  great  moral  bulwark  were 
taken  from  their  lives  if  Yale,  or  Harvard,  or  Princeton  should  close  its 
doors  to-day! 

But  Oxford  and  Cambridge  have  shown  us  that  there  is  no  charm  in 
endowments  to  ensure  good  work  for  all  time,  or  prevent  the  repetition 
of  a  similar  treason  to  public  education  in  New  England  or  any  part  of  the 
United  States.  If  the  oldest  and  proudest,  the  most  venerated  of  Ameri- 
can schools,  become  mere  training  schools  for  rich  men's  sons,  whither 
young  men  go  to  display  what  they  are  or  have  already,  and  not  modest- 
ly fit  themselves  to  be  something  hereafter ;  if  their  greatest  fame  is  to  be 
found  in  the  comic  songs  of  a  perambulatory  quartette,  or  the  "phenome- 
nal kicker"  of  a  foot-ball,  or  the  pluck  and  bottom  of  a  "varsity"  crew- 
then  upon  the  names  that  educated  Americans  have  loved  the  most  must 
be  written  "Upharsin!"  and  American  public  education  must  be  found, 
for  all  time  to  come,  in  the  "plebeian  universities,"  the  "one-horse  col- 
leges" producing  a  score  of  graduates  where  the  others  have  a  hundred, 
but  every  one  of  the  score  a  man.  But  will  you  trust  such  sacred  interests 
as  the  education  of  each  rising  generation  to  the  fickle  will  of  the 
populace?  Are  you  not  afraid  that  some  coming  Board  of  Regents, 
some  future  Legislature,  may  be  untrue  to  their  great  trust,  may 
"lower  the  standard,"  or  "demoralize  the  tone,"  may  admit  free-thinking, 
or  may  banish  the  classics?  Yes,  I  can  foresee  all  these  dangers,  and  I 


1 6  PUBLIC    EDUCATION. 


should  deprecate  them.  But  I  can  see  also  that  what  may  be  lost  or 
lowered  in  one  year  may  be  restored  and  re-elevated  in  another — that 
there  will  not  be  that  utter  incapacity  of  renovation  which  seems  to  be 
the  characteristic  of  close  corporations.  And  more  than  this,  I  can  see 
that  institutions  thus  open  to  the  influences  of  the  time  will  have  but  one 
danger  to  encounter,  and  not  two.  They  may  possibly  feel  the  effect  of 
a  changed  standard  of  education— and  nothing  can  secure  a  school 
against  this,— but  they  will  not  be  in  danger  of  being  deserted  entirely 
by  those  for  whom  they  were  intended,  as  has  happened  to  so  many 
endowed  schools  of  the  old  world.  It  will  do  no  good  to  keep  up  the 
standard  if  there  is  no  one  to  apply  it  to!  The  great  merits  of  State  pro- 
vision for  the  education  of  its  citizens  is  that  it  can  never  fall  into  the 
clutches  of  private  interests,  or  be  made  subservient  to  the  prejudices  of 
a  past  age.  With  every  new  generation  the  power  that  controls  it  must 
be  renewed.  There  may  be  those  who  regard  it  as  a  benefit  to  our  older 
colleges  that  they  are  anchored  fast  to  the  creeds  or  the  political  princi- 
ples of  the  16th,  the  17th,  or  the  18th  century.  I  do  not  wish  to  discuss 
the  question  whether  these  were  better  or  worse  than  those  of  the  19th. 
My  position  is  that  in  either  case  this  anchoring  is  a  mistake.  All  edu- 
cational institutions  are  only  means  for  bringing  the  new  generation  to  a 
point  where  they  may  be  of  most  service  to  their  own  contempararies, 
To  serve  that  end,  they  must  go  forward  with  the  great  stream  of  history. 
The  boat  locked  to  the  shore  may  be  in  a  better  or  worse  place  than  that 
to  which  the  stream  would  carry  it.  In  either  case  it  cannot  serve  the 
purpose  of  him  who  would,  him  who  must,  by  the  law  of  his  being 
advance  with  the  stream. 


Manufactured  by 

eAYLORD  BROS.  l«e. 

Syracu««,  N.  Y. 

Stockton,  Calif. 


THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


